Gerrard saw his penalty kick saved by Robert Green in the 79th minute with the scores level, but the 34-year-old rose to nod home Philippe Coutinho's corner with three minutes remaining to give the Reds three points.

In his penultimate game at Anfield, Gerrard moved ahead of Robbie Fowler in the all-time goalscoring list with his 184th for the club.

And the Reds boss praised Gerrard for his general level of performance, and admitted he kept him on the field because he thought the midfielder was capable of scoring – even after his miss from 12 yards.

“It's world class talent,” said Rodgers. “There's a very, very small group of players in that bracket where in the big games they score the big goals and they make the big contributions.

“Everyone has seen that throughout his entire career at Liverpool - he missed a penalty and sometimes you think it may go against us but there's no else more determined to score than Steven. It was a very good header.

“It's brilliant to get it at the Kop end, it's a real special moment for him, you can see he's still at this level, he's still contributing.

“I had people behind me, shouting to get him off - but this is a guy [who] when he missed a penalty, I knew if you keep him on, you have every chance of a goal, and he steps up to the plate.”

Philippe Coutinho opened the scoring with a nice finish, but Fer's well-timed volley put the game level.

The Reds were assisted by the sending off of Nedum Onuoha, who received two yellows in the space of three minutes – one for giving away the penalty, the other for hauling down Jordon Ibe.

Liverpool are on 61 points for the season and remain huge outsiders for Champions League qualification after picking up just one point from trips to West Brom and Hull over he past week.

Rodgers, however, was impressed with the response of his team when QPR equalised.

He said: “We can see the confidence is a little affected, certainly the belief is still there in the players and you can see how hard they're working but obviously a wee bit more confident we could have won three or four nil with the chances we created.

“We made it tough for ourselves but we responded brilliantly once we drew level.”